Every now and then, a thought enters my mind. Once inside my mind, it endures a lonely existence and rattles around long enough to morph into something quite different when it comes out than what went in.

Every now and then, a thought enters my mind. Once inside my mind, it
endures a lonely existence and rattles around long enough to morph into
something quite different when it comes out than what went in.
I am not quite sure when this thought entered my mind, but when it came
out of my mind it induced me to surprise my wife with a barbecue
supper. When this thought first raised its head, I was pleasantly
surprised that I, on my very own, could come up with such a good idea.
The key to this surprised barbecue supper was not letting my wife know
about it. I must admit that I am not very successful when it comes to
covert operations. I do not think my wife is psychic, but she seems to
know what I am going to do before I actually do it. This has helped me
out of many embarrassing situations.
The more I thought about this, the more the idea please me. My wife has
been working hard lately and I thought she about needed a nice little
surprise from Yours Truly. I was the man for the job.
I had to plan this operation down to the last second. I knew at the
outset this would be difficult, but the payoff would be well worth it.
I knew my wife was going to be out of town for most of the day, which
gave me plenty of time to put my plan into action.
The first thing on my agenda was to go to the grocery store and buy all
the necessary ingredients for my barbecue. This was going to be a
barbecue to end all barbecues. I love it when a plan comes together.
I bought some wonderful looking steaks, sweet potatoes for roasting (my
wife loves sweet potatoes), and equal portions of potato salad and
coleslaw.
"Having a barbecue?" the cashier said with a smile that almost touched
behind her head.
"Yea, I am surprising my wife with a barbecue supper."
"You have any charcoal for your grill?"
Whoops, that was not on my list, but I am sure glad she mentioned it. I
went back, got a bag of charcoal and brought it up to the cashier. As
she was ringing it up she said, "Do you have enough lighter fluid to
get all of the charcoal burning?"
Whoops, that was not on my list either. I ran back and got a can of
lighter fluid for the charcoal.
Everything seemed to be in order, I paid the cashier and as I headed for
the door, I was whistling a familiar tune.
It was a long time since I had done anything like this, and I was rather
proud of myself for thinking it up all by myself. It only goes to show
what a person can do when they think about something.
It took some doing, but I finally extracted the barbecue grill from the
back corner of the garage and set it up on the back patio. The steaks
are really going to be good tonight, I thought to myself. Is my wife
ever going to be surprised.
Another key to this whole surprise element was time. I wanted to time it
so that when my wife came through the door she would smell the barbecue
burning. The first thing I needed to do was get the barbecue grill
working in fine order. I assembled what I consider to proper amount of
charcoal on the grill set the bag down and picked up the can of lighter
fluid.
While I was working, I begin to muse within myself and thought that
barbecue grilling comes natural to a man. Many things we may not be
able to do, but when it comes to a barbecue grill, a man is a man. I
splashed a little lighter fluid on the charcoal and commenced to strike
a match. Nothing.
I struck another match and had the same results. With a little bit of
panic I looked at my watch and knew that my wife would be coming home
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